Tangram’s Smart and Stylish Jump Rope

Rocky would be proud. Your jump rope routine has become smarter thanks to the Tangram Smart Rope. The world’s a smarter place. Actually, the things we use are smarter. I’m on the fence on whether half of us should be allowed to walk outside.

Regardless, looking to impress your gym buddies with the latest fitness tech? Maybe you’re that guy eying the one lady working out on the treadmill. It ain’t the fitness tracker. Nope, it’s a jump rope.

Follow me down the sweaty road of a cardio workout…

Tangram Smart Jump Rope

It’s all in the LEDs. Before you think you’re going to be a badass and put up solid numbers, make sure you have the coordination and stamina to fill up the available four slots for characters.

23 LEDs are embedded in the Smart Rope to display your fitness prowess or absolute frustration. What? Sometimes a jump rope is damn evil. I blame my shoes. And possibly a lack of coordination…

At launch, the Tangram Smart Rope will display jump count, but future software updates will give you calories burned, interval data and symbols to register your double unders and other data.

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Damn you, Tangram. It’s a jump rope, and you made it look fantastic. It feels like fitness companies have finally unleashed the product designers and sent them into the wild.

Tangram’s Smart Rope comes in a variety of colors. If you don’t need the grip and protection from wear and tear, opt for the chrome, gold or black. Soft silicon grips are available in orange, blue, green, pink and a neutral gray.

Want your jump rope at the perfect angle? Tangram agrees, and the rope extends away from the grip at a 45-degree angle. That’s not only optimal for a workout; it also helps control the LED display.

[divider]Smart Rope Technology[/divider]

The handle houses the tech to track the 360-degree motion. One revolution equals one jump. The company opted for proprietary sensors to improve accuracy over gyroscopes and accelerometers.

Battery life clocks in at 30+ hours, giving you a month of workouts. Charging is via microUSB and takes about 2 hours to fully recharge.

It wouldn’t be a fitness tracker without an app. The Smart Gym is Tangram’s all encompassing fitness app with the Smart Rope being the first product to sync with it. The Smart Rope syncs via Bluetooth and keeps a log of your basic jump count, interval training and offers up gamification.

One area Tangram is skipping past is heart rate tracking. The technology isn’t there for it accurately track heart rate via the Smart Rope. Need heart rate tracking? Chest straps are the way to go. They work better than any wrist-work tracker.

Don’t stress Android users, the app is available on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

Raise your hand if you’re the type that can never get it to look as cool as the first time you pull something out of its carrying case? That would be me all the time.

I’m digging the Smart Rope. Baking fitness tracking into our fitness equipment is smart. There’s only so much activity tagging you can do inside a traditional tracker. Now imagine the ability for each to talk with a centralized app. That will be true fitness tracking.